All Things Urban

The International Summer School in Kaunas is inviting young professionals and students of architecture, history and heritage protection, sociology and related fields to explore the historical significance, cultural identity, and development potential of ‘the retreat’. Retreat always implies an interrelation of two spaces – one that we come from and one that we go to. In this year’s Summer School we are going to focus on this vital interrelationship through the context of the city of Kaunas and the resort town Kačerginė. Using these two sites as living laboratories, we will explore questions of identity, modernist heritage and cultural value and propose how the retreat might coexist with the city in the future. Can historic resort towns be a model for the future of the retreat in the twenty-first century and beyond? The workshop will be a series of investigations into the past, present and future role of the resort town of Kačerginė and its changing relationship with the neighbouring modernist city of Kaunas. Participants will interrogate the concept of retreat by developing different methods of researching and recording, then translating these into a series of ‘Public Drawings’ and manifestos. Participants will receive instructions on how to develop these ideas through a method of drawing that exploits the potential and possibilities of the Axonometric. Each day will start with a special task to develop more precise explorations and readings at different scales. Participants will work on a base drawing and the rules of the drawing matter will be explained in steps. The outcome will be a series of 2D/3D drawings and manifestos that are tools to record and develop new propositions for the future of the retreat in an age of cultural, social and environmental change.

24 selected participants from foreign and local fields will be mixed in international as well as multidisciplinary teams, involving planners, architects, researchers, historians, conservators and so on. Teams will be composed of 6 students.

At the beginning of 2017, Kaunas and Kaunas district were awarded the title of the European Capital of Culture for 2022. Together with various cultural organisations, artists and creatives, we develop a vast, endless and borderless programme that we call the Contemporary Capital. The entire time remaining until 2022 is our common journey from temporary to contemporary!